Objective  At present, the absence of the sense of place in historical blocks is still prominent, which is mainly caused by such problems as deficiency of cultural heritage and homogeneity of block function in different conservation and development models. Thus, based on the landsenses ecology theory, this research aims to provide theoretical method and technical reference for improving the space experience quality and intelligent management of historical blocks.

Methods  Landsenses ecology serves as the theoretical foundation of this research. Compared with landscape ecology, landsenses ecology is more concerned with the process of landscape perception and experience. It emphasizes the study of “human-oriented” use, planning, construction and management of land from the aspects of natural factor, physical perception, psychological cognition, social economy, process and risk, so as to realize sustainable development. The conceiving process of “landsenses creation” may be described as follows: The landsenses creation designer of a place comprehensively analyses various data related to human perception, such as physical perception and psychological cognition, based on which he/she builds an ecological model in line with the spatial or regional properties of the place. The construction of historical blocks is a process of continuous improvement of urban ecological system, which entails integrating social, economic, cultural, political, ecological and other factors to create a high-quality living environment to meet people’s needs of better landscape perception experience. This is consistent with the idea advocated by landsenses ecology that the dynamic equilibrium between urban landsenses ecology elements and the ever-increasing needs of urban residents should be promoted.

Results  Based on the concept of landsenses ecology, the research suggests that the landsenses creation for historical blocks be based on the analysis of the basic information and data about such blocks and the cities in which they are located, such as natural factors (landform, climate, resources, hydrology, light and heat environment, etc.), social economy and cultural background. Landsenses creation should focus on people’s perception of ecological environment, including physical perception and psychological cognition. Therefore, on the basis of sorting out the theoretical core and research framework of landsenses ecology, the research discusses the main contents of landsenses creation for historical blocks, and initially constructs a framework for integrating landsenses ecology information into historic blocks. First of all, the basic data and landsenses data about historic blocks, including such background information as natural environment, cultural background and social economy, as well as the information about the perception of such subjects as residents and tourists on historic blocks, can be fully obtained through collecting data through the internet of things (IoT) and the Internet and utilizing interdisciplinary technical approaches. Then, according to the feedback of data analysis, planners may integrate the vision of residents and tourists with landsenses carriers of historic blocks so as to enhance their spatial experience and feeling of involvement, and arouse their emotional resonance. Finally, in the process of landsenses creation, people’s needs and values are constantly changing along with social economy, urban development and other factors, accompanied by the constant feedback of data, thereby realizing the goal of improving landsenses.

Conclusion  This research proposes an intelligent process of landsenses creation from data acquisition, data analysis, vision construction to quality improvement of landsenses ecosystem. Firstly, obtain information about the current status of a historic block and about the perception of residents and tourists on the historical block based on the IoT data, big data and open data collected. As the main way to acquire and analyze landsenses information and data, IoT is composed of three layers: the perception layer for data collection, the network layer for data transmission and the application layer for data processing and analysis. Secondly, transfer data to the database in real time by a high-speed network. The information analysis system in the database can efficiently process and analyze the data received, and complete such tasks as real-time environmental monitoring, environmental information visualization and analysis modeling. Furthermore, use typical research methods from such disciplines as humanities, sociology and psychology to assist the analysis of different subjects’ perception experience and vision construction with respect to historic blocks. Cultural gene is the smallest research unit that may affect people’s perception experience, which can help reveal the relationship between the interaction of multi-dimensional perception and the sense of place in historical blocks, and subsequently create vision and landsenses. It is advised to use intelligent methods such as crawling online photos and machine learning technology to classify and simplify the identification steps of cultural genes of historical districts. Such methods can also help obtain the evaluation opinions on cultural genes of historical districts from different subjects based on semantic text analysis from the Internet. Meanwhile, the comparison between the construction level of different historical blocks from the perspective of space can indirectly reflect the development trend of a historical block from the temporal dimension, which may serve as a reference for the optimization of the construction model of a historical block.